Foil product



Nov. 30, 1965 H. F. RUSCHMANN I Emma, HENRY F, RUSCHM N United States Patent 3,220,806 FGIL PRODUCT Henry F. Ruschmann, Mine Brook Road,

Bernardsville, NJ.

Continuation of application Ser. No. 342,508, Feb. 4, 1964, which is a division of application Ser. No. 100,775, Feb. 14, 1961, now Patent No. 3,156,283, dated Nov. 10, 1964. This application Dec. 30, 1964, Ser. No. 425,374

9 Claims.

This application is a continuation of my co-pending application Serial No. 342,508, which was filed February 4, 1964, now abandoned and was itself a division of my prior application Serial No. 100,775, filed February 14, 1961, now Patent No. 3,156,283, issued November 10, 1964.

This invention relates to a Foil Product and more particularly to one, obtained by suitably operating upon sheets of foil, which has utilities without change of its form and independently has utility as an intermediate product in the production of slivers of foil. The foil which the invention contemplates may be either of metal (of which one example is aluminum), or of organic material (of which one example is cellulose acetate), or of combined materials such as metal coated with, or laminated together with films of, organic material. The slivers to which reference is made above are typically strips of foil of narrow (for example .005") width, of limited (for example .375") length, and of thickness of such a general order of magnitude as .001", of which the use may typically be their introduction into another substance in which they are to be dispersed in a predetermined proportion; one example of such a substance is a solid foam of organic material.

The foil product according to the invention may be considered as web-like. I have found that this Web-like product is itself useful for ornamentation, for novelty adaptations, for fluid-filtering purposes, and it may have still other utilities. It is an object of my invention to provide a novel web of foil material useful for ornamentation and/ or novelty adaptations. It is an object to provide such a web useful for fluid-filtering purposes. It is an object to provide such a web having still other useful functions.

The slivers in the production of which the foil product is useful are typically required to be of precise dimensions; to be capable of quite precise metering (i.e. determination of their number without individual counting); to be amenable to surface treatment such as de-greasing, drying, oxidizing, lacquering and the like; and in spite of such treatment and other handling including shipping, and on the other hand in spite of their inherent softness and general fragility to be available in essentially straight and flat condition for introduction into the substance in which they are to be dispersed. It is an object of my invention to provide an intermediate foil product particularly suited to the production of slivers meeting one, some or all of the requirements just set forth.

Allied and other objects will appear from the following description and the appended claims.

Methods of making the product above referred to, and of converting the product into discrete slivers, are claimed in my Patent No. 3,156,283 above mentioned, and apparatus suitable inter alia for the making of the product is claimed in my co-pending application Serial No. 210,715, filed July 18, 1962, now Patent No. 3,166,966, issued January 26, 1965. The present application is directed to the product, which may be briefly described as a flexible article of manufacture comprising an integral sheet of foil having a plurality of spaced-apart longitudinal bands and having therebetween adjacent narrow transverse strips merging at their extremities with those bands, each strip being inclined relative to the plane of the bands; preferredly for many purposes each alternate strip is inclined in one angular direction, and each intervening strip is inclined in the opposite angular direction, relative to that p ane.

Somewhat more specifically, each strip may be inclined out of the plane of the bands; preferredly for many purposes each alternate strip is inclined to one side, and each intervening strip is inclined to the other side, of that plane. Still more specifically, the corresponding edge of each strip is disposed substantially in the plane of the bands and each strip is inclined from that edge thereof out of that plane; preferredly for many purposes each alternate strip is inclined from that edge thereof to one side, and each intervening strip is inclined from that edge thereof to the other side, of that plane.

In the detailed description of the invention hereinafter set forth reference is had to the accompanying drawing, in which:

FIGURE 1 is a perspective view showing the product according to the invention emerging from apparatus (itself only fractionally shown) by which it may be formed;

FIGURE 2 is a greatly enlarged cross-sectional view of a minute length of the product as it is about to emerge and just after it has emerged from that apparatus;

FIGURE 3 is a view similar to FIGURE 2 but showing a form of the product alternative to that of FIGURE 2 in respect of the inclinations of the transverse strips;

FIGURE 4 is a perspective View of the product in an areally simplified form; and

FIGURE 5 is a perspective view of apparatus by which the product may be converted into discrete slivers, this apparatus among other things providing for any desired surface treatment of the product prior to such conversion.

In describing the foil product according to the invention it will be convenient first to set forth in very abbreviated terms a typical process of its manufacture, with reference particularly to FIGURES 1 and 2. In that process a sheet 109 of foil may be advanced (in these figures, moved rightwardly) through a slot or orifice 12 formed between the top edge of a block 13 and the bottom edge of a block 14 the slot being of a vertical dimension at least slightly greater than the thickness of the foil, and the fronts of the blocks 13 and 14 together forming a cutting surface lapped to a thoroughly plane state. The advancing foil emerging forwardly from the slot 12 is operated upon by knives 81 and 82 whose rear surfaces move up and down along the front surfaces of the blocks 13 and 14. In the upper portion of the knife 81 its front surface is bevelled rearwardly to intersect its rear surface in the upwardly directed cutting edge 85, while in the lower portion of the knife 82 its front surface is bevelled rearwardly to intersect its rear surface in the downwardly directed cutting edge 86. Both knives may be held in an appropriate up-and-down-reciprocating carriage (not shown) relative to which they are biased into contact of their rear surfaces with the front surfaces of blocks 13 and 14 and by which they are moved up and down without alteration of the spacing between the cutting edges 85 and 86. The lower-knife cutting edge may be positionally adjusted within the carriage so that when the latter has reached the top of the stroke that edge will have been raised to a minute extent (typically .0015" or .002") above the top of the slot 12; correspondingly the upper.- knife cutting edge may be adjusted so that when the carriage has reached the bottom of its stroke that edge will have been lowered to a similar minute extent below the bottom of the slot 12.

The result of the continuous reciprocation of the knives 81 and 82 while the sheet 109 of foil is being advanced is that when that reciprocation approaches its upward peak the knife edge 85 will reach and will upwardly pierce or shear the sheet, progressing a minute distance therebeyond and then receding downwardly, and that when the reciprocation approaches its downward peak the knife edge 86 will reach and will downwardly pierce or shear the sheet, progressing a minute distance therebeyond and then receding upwardly. It will be understood that because the vertical dimension of the slot 12 is at least slightly greater than the thickness of the foil the sheet 109, in either the up-or-down-stroke or both, may be slightly displaced up or down within the slot before actually being pierced. It will further be understood that from the time either knife edge reaches and has begun to pierce the sheet, on to the time that edge has arrived at a corresponding position in its receding movement, the rear surface of that knife will tend to act as a closed gate across the slot 12, temporarily interfering with the emergence of the sheet from the orifice constituted by the front of the slot; with typical values (including for example a carriage stroke of about .200) this closed gate action may occur throughout about 15% or less of each half-cycle of reciprocation.

Tranversely of the sheet 109 the cutting edges 85 and 86 will be limited in extent so that their operation will leave uncut at least two and in typical cases many more longitudinal bands on the sheet. When more than two such bands are to be left uncut those cutting edges may be subdivided into a plurality of spaced sections. Thus the upper knife 82 may be provided with a plurality of vertical recesses 90 extending for at least a very short distance upwardly from its cutting edge 86, each recess having a transverse dimension equal to that of the respective longitudinal band which it is desired be leftuncut; the lower knife 82 will be provided with a corresponding plurality of vertical recesses 89 extending for at least a very short. distance downwardly from the cutting edge 85, of similar widths to the corresponding recesses 90 and respectively aligned therewith transversely. In order to insure that the side of the recesses 89 and 15 90 will not produce unintended tears at the extremities of the lines of shearing of the sheet by the sections of the knife edges, those sides may be bevelled so that they intersect the rear surfaces of the knives at an acute angle and thus themselves from with those rear surfaces vertical short cutting edges; the ends of the knives may be correspondingly bevelled. Such bevelling has been indicated in connection with the upper knife 82 by the bevelled surfaces 92, and (to the extent readily possible in FIGURE 1) in connection with the lower knife 81 by the bevelled sur face 91.

Reference may be had to the abovementioned Patent No. 3,156,283 for further details of the apparatus as far forwardly as the knives 81 and 82.

FIGURE 1 illustrates the sheet 109 emerging forwardly from between the knives, by which it has been operated on so that it has been converted into a web 110 constituting a product according to the invention. In this figure there will be seen in the web the longitudinal bands 111 which, by reason of the recesses 89 and 90 in the knives and because of the restriction of the length of the knives to less than the width of the sheet 109, have been left unsheared; there will also be seen in the longitudinal paths between those bands a succession of transverse strips 112 which are very narrow i.e. of very small dimension longitudinally of the web 110, which dimension may typically be much smaller than that which it has been possible to draw in this figure and which merge at their extremities with the bands 111.

FIGURE 1 also illustrates the winding up of the web on a cylinder or spool 115 suitably carried on a mandrel 116 which, by means themselves well understood and not herein necessary to show, is slip-driven to wind up the web as fast as it emerges from the apparatus, but without placing the web under longitudinal tension suflicient either to distort it or to affect the operation of the apparatus from which the web emerges.

FIGURE 2 illustrates a typical cross section taken longitudinally through the last few transverse strips 112 of the web to have been formed by the knives, and through a contiguous short portion of the sheet which is about to arrive at the knives, all in very greatly exaggerated size; it also illustrates in dash-dot lines the cross section of the end portion of one of the knives (by way of example, the upper knife 82) at substantially its extreme (e.g. lowermost) position. The strip 112 which is in contact with the bevelled front of the knife 82 will be seen to have been rocked by the knife front counterclockwise as seen in this figure i.e. to have been displaced downwardly adjacent its rear edge about its forward edge into an inclination downwardly, out of the plane of the longitudinal bands 111; it (as well as the second, fourth etc. strip which is located forwardly from it and which will of course have been similarly affected by the same knife) is specially designated as 112b. On the other hand the intervening strips 112 will have been conversely affected by the lower knife 81; each will have been rocked by the front of that knife clockwise as seen in this figure i.e. will have been displaced upwardly about its adjacent rear edge about its forward edge into an inclination upwardly out of the plane of the longitudinal bands 111, these intervening strips being specially designated as 112a.

What has just been said of course applies to the strips 112 throughout their lengths (i.e. dimensions transverse of the web) excepting at their very end portions 113 in immediate adjacency to the longitudinal bands 111; within those end portions 113 the strips 112 of course progressively lose their inclinations, to merge into the longitudinal bands in the plane of the latter.

It will be appreciated that one of the two knives (e.g. the lower knife 81) may be omitted, with the results that the shearing will take place only once in each cycle of carriage reciprocation and that the separation between the parallel transverse paths of shearing will be the distance by which the sheet 109 advances during the whole cycle. The resulting product is illustrated in cross section in FIGURE 3, a view otherwise analogous to FIGURE 2 above described. Herein the transverse strips 112 are specially designated as 1120 in view of their greater width (assuming no change in the speed of advancement of the sheet 109), and the end portions of those strips are designated as 113c in view of their specifically different configuration from the end portions 113 of FIGURE 2; within those end portions 113e, however, the strips 112C progressively lose their inclinations in qualitative analogy to the strips of FIGURE 2, to merge analogously into the longitudinal bands 111 in the plane of the latter. (For certain purposes, such as the production of discrete slivers, the omission of either knife is ordinarily disadvantageous, since the ultimate limitation on the quantity or length of the sheet 109 operated on per unit of time by an apparatus of the character above described is in general not the speed by 'which the sheet may be advanced, but rather the maximum practical frequency of reciprocation of the knives, which maximum does not shift appreciably whether both or only one of those knives be employed, and it follows that that quantity per unit of time is substantially twice as great with two knives as with one; the use of the two knives has further advantages as well, which have to do with the product for certain purposes and which are hereinafter set forth.)

For many purposes the feature of alternate inclinations of the strips 112 shown'in and described in connection with FIGURE 2 which inclinations without difliculty survive the rolling up of the web on spool 115 so long as the slip-drive of the mandrel 1-16 is adjusted to avoid unnecessary and excessive longitudinal tension on the web in the winding-up process has several distinct advantages. Some of these advantages spring from the resulting openness of the web, not only in comparison with a web formed by shearing but with no inclination of the strips (which would tend to be devoid of openness), but also in comparison with a web (e.g. that of FIG- URE 3) formed with inclination of all of its strips in the same direction. One such advantage has to do with surface treatment of the web, such as de-greasing, drying, oxidizing, coating with lacquer or other agents, etc.; this advantage is that the particularly high degree of openness of the web provided by the alternate inclinations of the strips facilitates the access of the treating agents whether solvent, air, oxidizer, lacquer or other coating agent, or still other agent to all the surfaces of the web. Another such advantage has to do with novelty adaptations, wherein the alternate inclinations maximize the degree of semi-transparency of the web material between the longitudinal bands, while at the same time increasing the number of directions from and to which light reflections will be effected by that portion of the web. Still another such advantage has to do with fluid-filtering uses, for which the alternate inclinations afford new combinations of perviousness with area, strength and other parameters. Another class of advantage has to do with uses in which there may be desired a distinction in freedom of movement of the web surface along another surface; with the alternate inclinations such a distinction is provided on both surfaces of the web. There may well be still other advantages and classes of advantage.

The web 110 fractionally shown in FIGURE 1 and above described has many longitudinal bands 111; it will however be of course understood that by suitable formation of the knives and choice of the width of the sheet of foil that number may be decreased to any number as low as two without destroying the web nature of the resulting product. The last-mentioned variation is illustrated by the web 110 of FIGURE 4, which also illustrates the obvious variability of inter-band distance by showing such a distance materially larger than in the case of the web of FIGURE 1.

A characteristic inherent in the web 110 is a very substantial difference between its flexibility in the longitudinal and transverse directions-Le. the amenability of the product to bending along a transverse line (longitudinal flexibility) and the amenability to bending along a longitudinal line (transverse flexibility). The former is high; this results from the fact that only the stiffness of the bands 111, which in the aggregate occupy a minor part only of any transverse line across the product, is available to resist bending. On the other hand the latter, while appreciable, is much lower; any longitudinal line along one of the bands finds the stiffness of uninterrupted material, while any longitudinal line crossing the strips 112 finds the stiffness inherent in each strip being disposed at an angle. It is of course the substantial amenability to bending along transverse lines (longitudinal flexibility) which permits the product to be rolled up, without injury, in the manner shown in FIGURE 1 and hereinabove described.

Attention may now be directed to the use of the web 110 as an intermediate product in the process of producing slivers of foil such as earlier hereinabove discussed, which slivers will of course be formed by the strips 112 upon their suitable removal from the web.

It will frequently be desirable that the slivers ultimately to be produced be subjected to a surface treatment consisting of a de-greasing operation followed by suitable drying; furthermore for many uses the slivers may require a further treatment of their principal surfaces (i.e. of their faces and their side edges) such as oxidizing, lacquering, coating with other agents, subsequent re-drying and/or other surface treatment. Desirably any such treatment or treatments is or are performed on the slivers while they remain parts of the web. In this connection it may be pointed out that the inclination of the strips out of the plane of the longitudinal bands, and especially their preferred inclinations in alternate directions, discussed above, are a very great facilitation not only in providing access of the treating agent or agents to the surfaces of the strips but also in avoiding bridging from one strip to its neighbor by relatively thicker or more viscous agents.

For the purpose of surface treatment of the slivers the web 110, rolled up on the spool 115, may be mounted on a mandrel 118. From the thus-mounted spool the web may be drawn down into an inclosure through a suitable slot 119 therein, and from that enclosure the web may emerge through a suitable slot 121, typically to pass next over an idler roller 122. The enclosure 120 may be considered as forming the confines of apparatus suitable to the continuous performance of each and every surface treatment which it is desired be performed on the principal surfaces of the slivers, which treatment or treatments will by that apparatus be performed on those surfaces while the slivers remain parts of the web. Within this apparatus the web may travel as far and through as many compartments as may be necessary or desirable, before emerging through the slot 121.

The web after emerging from the enclosure 120 is in condition to be cut longitudinally, within the confines of the longitudinal paths thereon occupied by the strips 112, in order to form the slivers as such. While any means for accomplishing this cutting may be employed, I have found preferable a suitable slitter through which the web may be drawn longitudinally and whichin typical cases itself forms the means which draws the web off from the spool 115 on mandrel 118 and through the enclosure 121) and over the idler roller 122.

The slitter 130 may have two interrelated portions. The lower portion may comprise a series of parallel hardened discs 131 concentrically carried by and normal to a shaft 133. The upper portion may comprise a series of parallel hardened discs 132 concentrically carried by and normal to a shaft 134 parallel to shaft 133, the discs v132 being of the same diameter as but permissibly thinner than the discs 131 and twice as many in number. The lefthand pair of the discs 132, designated as 132a, are spaced apart by a distance such that their peripheral portions may just enter between the peripheral portions of the lefthand and next-to-lefthand of the lower discs 131; the next pair of discs, designated as 132b, are similarly spaced apart to permit their peripheral portions just to enter between the peripheral portions of the nextto-lefthand and second-from-lefthand of the lower discs 131 and are suitably spaced apart from the first pair to permit the entries just mentioned to take place simultaneously; and so on. The shafts 133 and 134 will be so spaced apart that the distance of the entries abovementioned may be very minute typically of the order of a few thousandths of an inch, that overlap having been somewhat exaggerated in FIGURE 5 for the purpose merely of emphatic illustration.

The shafts 133 and 134 may be journalled in suitable mountings (not shown), coupled together by suitable gears (not shown) to result in oppositely directed rotations of the two at identical peripheral speeds, and rotated (clockwise as to the lower shaft 133 as seen in FIGURE 5) by any suitable means (not shown).

The web being properly positioned and guided laterally by suitable means (schematically illustrated by the guide 129 in FIGURE 5), the passage of the web through the slitter will result in the conversion of the web into waste ribbons 149 and the desired slivers 150. The waste ribbons 149 will be formed by the respective lower discs 131 operating on and detaching the longitudinal bands 111 of the web together with the immediately adjacent end portions 113 of the strips 112, the detached ribbons (except the two respectively including the margins of the sheet 109) being forced by the respective discs 131 into arcuate positions displaced inwardly from the peripheries of the upper discs 132 by a trifle more than the minute distance of overlap between lower and upper discs and disposed between an outer surface of-one pair of discs 132 and the nearby outer surface of the next pair. The waste ribbons will be induced by frictional contact of their edges with the upper-disc surfaces to attempt to stay in those positions and rotate with the upper discs; but this action (which of course could not be tolerated) may readily be foreclosed by suitable fingers 138 extending, from any convenient mounting (not shown), diagonally downwardly to between the respective pairs of upper discs 132, these fingers serving to cam the waste ribbons outwardly from those positions. The non-marginal waste ribbons may pass from the respective fingers, and the marginal waste ribbons may pass directly, over a nearby idler roller 137 to fall therebeyond.

On the other hand the slivers 150 which will be detached by reason of the respective pairs of upper discs 132 operating thereon will be forced by those respective disc pairs into positions which are slightly displaced inwardly from the peripheries of the lower discs 131 and which are disposed between mutually facing lower-disc surfaces; these positions will be parallel transverse ones, and each sliver will tend to remain in a respective one of these positions by reason of the frictional contact of its extremities with the lower disc surfaces, as indicated at 150' in FIGURE 5. Each sliver may be permitted to make a third or so of a revolution (of the lower shaft) while remaining so positioned, and may then be cammed outwardly from between the discs 131 by one of a group of fingers 139 which may extend diagonally upwardly from below the slitter into the respective interlower-disc spaces. The detached slivers may fall into a chute 140 by which they are delivered to an appropriate destination. The number of slivers delivered into the chute 140 may be quite precisely metered by a means measuring the length of the sheet 109 subjected to the longitudinal cutting; this means may for example be a revolution counter coupled to one of the shafts of the slitter. Thus in FIGURE there is illustrated such a counter 125 fixedly supported in any convenient manner adjacent the lefthand end of the lower shaft 131 of the slitter and having, on a thin stem extending from the counter, an actuating star wheel 126 which may for example be advanced, one notch at each revolution of the lower shaft 131, by a small arm 127 extending from that shaft.

While I have disclosed my invention in terms of particular embodiments thereof, it will be understood that I intend thereby no unnecessary limitations. Modifications in many respects will be suggested by my disclosure to those skilled in the art, and such modifications will not necessarily constitute departures from the spirit of my invention or from its scope, which I undertake to define in the following claims.

I claim:

1. An article of manufacture characterized by differenstrips form the only material between said bands.

3. The subject matter claimed in claim 1 wherein the corresponding edge of each strip is disposed substantially in said plane and wherein each strip is inclined from said edge thereof out of said plane.

4. An article of manufacture characterized by differential flexibility as between longitudinal and transverse directions, comprising an integral sheet of foil having a plurality of spaced-apart longitudinal bands and having therebetween adjacent narrow transverse strips merging at their extremities with said bands, each alternate strip being inclined in one angular direction, and each intervening strip being inclined in the opposite angular direction, relative to the plane of said bands.

5. The subject matter claimed in claim 4 wherein said strips form the only material between said bands.

6. An article of manufacture characterized by differential flexibility as between longitudinal and transverse directions, comprising an integral sheet of foil having a plurality of spaced-apart longitudinal bands and having therebetween adjacent narrow transverse strips separate from each other but merging at their extremities with said bands, each alternate strip being inclined to one side, and each intervening strip being inclined to the other side, of the plane of said bands.

7. The subject matter claimed in claim 6 wherein said strips form the only material between said bands.

8. An article of manufacture characterized by differential flexibility as between longitudinal and tranverse directions, comprising an integral sheet of foil having a plurality of spaced-apart longitudinal bands and having therebetween adjacent narrow transverse strips separate from each other but merging at their extremities with said bands, the corresponding edge of each strip being disposed substantially in the plane of said bands, each alternate strip being inclined from said edge thereof to one side, and each intervening strip being inclined from said edge thereof to the other side, of said plane.

9. The subject matter claimed in claim 6 wherein said strips form the only material between said bands.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 571,358 11/1896 Gilmore 29193.5 1,650,518 11/1927 Humphris 29-180 2,430,518 11/1947 Mainwal 29--193.5

DAVID L. RECK, Primary Examiner.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE CERTIFICATE OF CORRECTION Patent No. 3 220 ,806 November 30 1965 Henry F. Ruschmann It is hereby certified that error appears in the above numbered patent requiring correction and that the said Letters Patent should read as corrected below.

Column 3, line 42, strike out "15''; column 4, lines 26 and 27, for "about its adjacent" read adjacent its Signed and sealed this 4th day of October 1966.

(SEAL) Attest:

ERNEST W. SWIDER Attesting Officer EDWARD J. BRENNER Commissioner of Patents 

1. AN ARTICLE OF MANUFACTURE CHARACTERIZED BY DIFFERENTIAL FLEXIBILITY AS BETWEEN LONGITUDINAL AND TRANSVERSE DIRECTIONS, COMPRISING AN INTEGRAL SHEET OF FOIL HAVING A PLURALITY OF SPACED-APART LONGITUDINAL BANDS AND HAVING THEREBETWEEN ADJACENT NARROW TRANSVERSE STRIPS MERGING AT THEIR EXTREMITIES WITH SAID BANDS, EACH STRIP BEING INCLINED RELATIVE TO THE PLANE OF SAID BANDS. 